Woodsmall had flown into town to see a business partner, said police Capt. Thomas Wendel.

The plane, a single-engine Cirrus SR22 registered to a company based in Mission Hills, scraped the home of a 91-year-old woman before crashing into her backyard at about 8:10 p.m., officials said.

The woman was not injured and no one else was inside the home on Wooster Heights Road at the time.

"He (Woodsmall) was on short approach ... he was approximately half a mile to the runway." Danbury Municipal Airport Administrator Paul Estefan said at a news conference Sunday night at Miry Brook Volunteer Firehouse, also attended by Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton and Danbury Police Chief Al Baker. "(The plane had) a turbo-charged engine on it. And it's good for high-altitude flight."

According to Flight Aware, a website that tracks flight plans, the Cirrus took off from Easton/Newnam Field in Easton, Md. at 6:48 p.m. on Sunday and was scheduled to make a one-hour and 36-minute hop to Danbury Municipal Airport, touching down at 8:24 p.m.

Just two days before, the plane took off from Olathe, Kan. and flew to Maryland. It is registered to a company named Cirrwood LLC, based in Mission Hills, Kan.

Woodsmall, Estafan said, had filed an IFR flight plan, indicating that he was flying by instruments. He said he did not know whether the pilot had sent a distress call.

"I don't know at this point. We haven't heard the tapes," Estafan said. "When the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) arrives at the scene, the scene will be transferred to them under federal law.

Estafan said that the plane was equipped with a "deployable (parachute) in the event of an emergency.

"The parachute ... was an option that you can put on this airplane," he said.

Jennie Valeri, 91, was standing in her kitchen balancing her checkbook when the plane crashed, shaking the whole house, which she says was built in 1695.

"I heard something gigantic. I had never heard something like that in my life," Valeri said. "I feel like it's a miracle for me to be here.

"I called 911 and told them that there was a plane in my backyard," she said. "To me, it looked like a huge toy plane."

Woodsmall was pronounced dead at the scene, although Valeri thinks he may have survived the impact.

She says she heard the man's voice as authorities arrived.

Her son, Paul Valeri, said he raced over to his mother's house as soon as he heard news of the crash.

He said when he arrived the crash site was already teeming with emergency personnel.

"It (the plane) clipped the (airport) beacon at the corner of Dartmouth (Lane) and Cornell (Road)," he said. "The fuselage landed inches from (her house)."

Tom Valeri, another of Genny Valeri's sons, said he heard about the crash from one of his mother's neighbors.

"Your mom is OK. She's with us, but a plane hit her house," the neighbor told him, Tom Valeri said.

"We were the first ones on the scene," said Phil Fenton, who says that he and his wife have lived on Harvard Road for 30 years. "We couldn't identify what kind of plane it was."

Fenton said he and his wife, Toni, were at home when they heard a "screeching" sound.

Fearing that it was a car accident, he says, they bolted out of the house in the direction of the crash, only to come across the plane.

The Cirrus, Phil Fenton said, had crashed nose-up against the side of Jennie Valeri's house, though the plane's fuselage was not on fire.

The cause of the crash is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, which is expected to release a preliminary report in several weeks.

"I'm very proud of the work done by the Danbury Police Department, the fire department, volunteer component as well. We are using their firehouse, and they have been outstanding tonight in being able to address this tragic situation," said Boughton at the news conference. "We won't be releasing the identity of the pilot until the next of kin has been notified."

This was the second crash near the airport this month.

On Oct. 1, a single-engine Mooney 20 plunged into a sparsely populated residential in Ridgefield just after takeoff, raising local residents' concerns about air traffic over their neighborhoods.